Graham Woods: Instinct and experience key for Lions punters

The first Lions tour I was aware of as it was unfolding was the 1989 series in Australia, when being aware meant waking up on Saturday morning to see what the score was on Ceefax for a game that had kicked off around 6am.

The first one I covered at the Racing Post was also against the Wallabies in 2001, and we’ve gone full circle twice and back to Australia for 2025.

No one needs telling how much the Lions brand has grown in those years. Last month’s squad announcement will have attracted a far bigger TV audience than the Test matches of 1989 and the crowd at Stadium Australia for the final Test this summer will be four times the turnout in Sydney 36 years ago.

Other changes this century include the introduction of a home “send-off” match. Four years ago the Lions took on Japan in Edinburgh while the first full international they played on British soil was in 2005 when their opponents, just as they are on Friday, were Argentina.

That game against the Pumas at the Principality Stadium 20 years ago remains the only Lions match I have ever been to. It wasn’t a great game but it was a memorable occasion and enjoyable experience, and I found myself reflecting on that night as I tried to weigh up an 18-point handicap in Friday’s rematch.

I was in Cardiff for that first game as a guest of a bookmaker, and when I was talking to the firm’s rugby compiler a few days earlier he asked me where I would pitch the handicap for the game.

Argentina were missing virtually their entire first-team squad, most of whom played in France, where the Top 14 playoffs were still in progress.

The Lions were missing a few too and hadn’t been together long, so I ventured maybe ten points and was laughed at. “I’m starting at double that,” was the response.

Well, they weren’t double that come match day – it was four times that – and on the train to Cardiff the compiler who had come up with that line was fretting like mad.

“We’re going to get filled in, can’t see them keeping it below 60 or more, one-way traffic, they’ve got no chance.”

As it turned out, it was far from one-way traffic. The Lions couldn’t hold on to the ball, couldn’t win their own scrum, trailed 19-16 at half-time and were 25-22 down with 80 minutes up.

A last-gasp penalty from Jonny Wilkinson – his sixth of the night – salvaged a draw for the Lions and the result marked a downbeat start to a disappointing tour that ended with a 3-0 series defeat to the All Blacks.

The mood in my bookmaker hosts’ box, by contrast, was jubilant.

“We’ve pulled this one out of the fire,” raved the compiler who had been so worried just hours earlier.

“Really all we’ve done is pluck a number out of the air.”

So, having initially put up a ten-point line, one that turned out to be considerably closer than the bookmakers’, did I cash in and win big? Well, no, because not for the first or last time I fell into the trap of not listening to my own views and instead going with the crowd. I let myself be swayed and backed the Lions to win big.

That’s not to say my initial instinct was any more right than what bookmakers thought. What I should have taken on board was that my take wasn’t based on anything more solid than what the layers were offering.

Eight years on I’m afraid I still hadn’t learned. Going into the final Test in Australia, the 2013 series was tied at 1-1 and the Lions, having been series favourites at the outset, were installed as underdogs and the headline news was that Brian O’Driscoll had been dropped.

Lions coach Warren Gatland had got it wrong according to every onlooker, and even though I told myself Gatland knew O’Driscoll better than most, having given him his international debut, and that the coach now had his own man Jamie Roberts lining up in midfield, someone he knew was the perfect fit for his gameplan, I was again swayed and swerved the Lions.

The lesson I suppose is that any Lions tour is filled with unknowns and that applies just as much to bookmakers and punters, and going with instinct and experience is just as much use as poring over stats and crunching numbers.

So based on my own experience I guess I should get on the draw at 40-1. What’s not to like?

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